Record Store Day: Proof Vinyl Is Alive And Well

Record Store Day is April 18, check out CT's shops for specials and sweet vinyl deals

As listening to recorded music has become a daily staple of modern life, the way we listen has changed to be mostly about ease of access. A reel-to-reel machine from back in the day can't be easily moved from location to location, and you certainly can't take a turntable with you on a jog through the park or on the bus.

From the vinyl record to cassette tapes to compact discs to digital files, music formats have gotten smaller and smaller to the point where we can now carry our entire libraries with us in our pockets. Sure, people still listen to CDs, and cassette tapes have made a bit of a retro/hipster comeback, but nothing has seen a revival quite like vinyl. And the growth of Record Store Day — Saturday, April 18, this year — is proof.

Despite the unwieldy size and relative fragility of LPs, sales of vinyl records have climbed in recent years despite comprising a small portion of overall music sales. In an age when nearly everything can be downloaded in seconds or streamed instantly, it's remarkable that consumers are paying for music at all, let alone for the most cumbersome of formats. Vinyl has made such a dramatic comeback that Official Charts launched two new weekly vinyl charts in the U.K. In 2012, 67 percent of all vinyl sales came from independent retailers, even though giant national chains like Barnes & Noble and Urban Outfitters are increasingly offering vinyl to their customers.

Record Store Day, which happens annually on the third Saturday in April, is the result of a group of independent record store owners and employees finding a way to bring the focus of music-buying and listening back to the independent, brick-and-mortar record stores that have struggled to survive the digital era. Last year, vinyl sales reached an 18-year high, with 1.29 million sales of vinyl records. That number is expected to continue to grow.

The event kicked off officially in 2008 and grew steadily, leading to day-long promotions and events at record stores on every continent but Antarctica. Record Store Day, at its core, is meant to foster that sense of community built around the independent, knowledgeable and trustworthy local record shop, and for the most part it succeeds. People flock to these stores hoping to get their hands on super-limited pressings of special, exclusive releases, with little concrete knowledge if their chosen store was even able to receive any copies, let alone if they'd already been scooped up early shoppers.

Record Store Day is a decidedly Internet-age event, and many record shops are blissfully pre-digital. Not every record shop takes part in the excitement, however. It's the event's perpetual set-up for disappointment that led Merle's Record Rack owner Michael Papa to back out of actively participating in Record Store Day, even though he acknowledges the movement's heart is in the right place.

Merle's Record Rack has been in business since 1962, and Michael Papa has been behind the wheel for much of that time. In his eyes, Record Store Day means well, and still brings a lot of people out to his shop despite no possibility of landing an exclusive release, but he thinks the hyper-exclusivity of limited production runs of popular and highly sought-after releases does more harm than good. "When they're only putting 1,000 copies of something out across the country, the chances of anyone getting them is slim to none, and you frustrate the customer," he says. "So I'd rather tell them we're not getting it."

The nature of this release system effectively creates demand, which is part of the plan. And while high demand will spur people to search for these hard-to-find releases on Record Store Day, there's a good chance they're not necessarily regular customers. And regular record-store shoppers are what Record Store Day is trying to create. "I want to see the guy that's in here buying Crosby, Stills and Nash every week," Papa says. Record Store Day does ask its participating stores to sign a pledge stating that they will operate in the spirit of the event and only sell the exclusive releases to their physical customers on Record Store Day, and not to overcharge for high-demand releases or set them aside to sell online later. The stores themselves try to order what they can, but basically have no idea what exclusive releases they'll receive until the day before the event. Papa says he'd be happy to step back into officially participating in Record Store Day if the system was changed to something more like a lottery, where the record stores are fully aware ahead of time what to tell their customers to expect to find come Record Store Day.

"At the end of the day, we were tired of frustrating our customers thinking something would be here," Papa says. "You don't want to be in the business of disappointing people, and customer after customer, people were getting pissed. We're doing this because we want to help people," he says. Having to make that decision was part of being a business owner, Papa says, and trying to keep his customers happy. And Mere's is really about the avid vinyl listener and collector, also selling the maps, cleaning supplies, record needles and other things necessary to keep your turntable happy and running smoothly.

As for what you can expect at a more traditional Record Store Day experience, Redscroll Records in Wallingford fully participates in the procuring and selling of exclusive releases, but is still looking for ways to make sure their customers have as comfortable an experience as possible. It's fairly common for people to start lining up early in order to be the first to dig through the day's treasures, and it can get pretty packed inside smaller stores very quickly. This year, Redscroll is introducing an outdoor Record Store Day tent in its parking lot. Customers will still be able to check out everything regularly available in the store, and be able to browse through RSD exclusives, without crowding each other. Two food trucks, Hardcore Sweets and G-Monkey, will be set up as well. Shoppers can look forward to goodie bags, created with the help of local bands and friends of the Redscroll crew.

Whether you choose to shop for Record Store Day exclusives on one day a year, or treat every day like it's Record Store Day, local record stores are glad to see you, and glad you're supporting the cause, even if the cause isn't always perfect.